Nothing Happened
by bisexualcharliedavis
Summary: The sun is bright in the winter sky, it's never summer in Ballarat. (Major character death, kudo to seven-dragons for inspiration for the summary quote)


A/N: Two fics in one week? Lucky you. I feel like this is a fic best read without too much of a preword so I'll keep this short. Warnings: Character death, angst. Leave a review if you liked it!

I still remember the last time I saw him, before I left. It's was a Saturday night, there was light streaming in through the blinds on the back window of his car. Vertically, his face was covered half in light, and half in dark. There was music playing on the radio, Hanging on Baby. I wondered when they would stop playing it, it felt cruel, with him dead. Looking back, I wish I hadn't even noticed the damn radio. I wish I spent all that time noticing him. But I didn't, and I suppose there's nothing I can do about it now.

I spend a lot of time looking back, these days. The last week more then ever. A single suitcase sits open on my bed, in it is one shirt, (orange, with a collar.) one pair of pants (Tan, hemmed), a three pairs of socks, (Black, all new) three pairs of boxers (White, all new) and two pairs of pajamas (One white shirt, one blue shirt, two pairs of off white pants). I am traveling sparingly. I hope to arrive in Ballarat in the afternoon, and book into the hotel by the evening. Tomorrow, I will be wearing my uniform for the full day so there is no need to pack extra clothes. After the funeral, when I am looking for something to do to dull the ache I will go to the laundromat and wash the clothes from the day before. From there, I will go back to the hotel, and go to bed. The following day I will put my regular clothes on, get on the train, and come back to Melbourne. Efficient, simple, tidy. Just how I like it.

I still need to pack my toiletries. Toothbrush (new) toothpaste (half full, but clean) hair wax (Full) and comb into a smaller canvas bag, each item clinking against one another. I've always been a creature of habit: Indeed, I've been using the same brand of toothpaste since I was a boy, and the same brand of hair wax since I was a teenager. Closing the clasps on my bag, I suppose I should also figure out what decorations I should bring with me.

No need for cufflinks, so I leave them in their little blue box. I brought these cufflinks to go with the suit I brought shortly after leaving Ballarat, having, in my haste, left my other one at the dry cleaners. My Mason's pin glistens at me from it's own blue box. I've never worn it, or the matching ring. I suppose I didn't even really want to join the Masons, but it's just what you did when you reached a certain level of importance, and you knew enough people who were also Masons. So I said the things I had to say, and did the things I had to do, and became a member. Going to meetings fills up some of my afternoons. Drinking there is just as good as drinking at home. I've never served in the military, and never been commended by the police so I have no medals or ribbon bars. So I leave with nothing. Detective Charlie Davis has nothing to decorate himself with for his friend's (lovers?) funeral? How sad for me.

In the last few years I have been stripping my living arrangements of things that I don't need, so this is not unexpected. When you don't really go out, what's the use of having three pairs of cufflinks. I settled for my watch, though it's changed band's many times over the last few years, this one has served me well. I brought it roughly five years ago, when I lost my other one in a lake chasing a suspected murderer. I was heartbroken at the time, I'd had that watch since I lived in Ballarat and was one of the few things I had kept associated with that place. I got over it, and brought a new watch. Rose would say that it was typical of me.

Closing my suitcase, I carried it to the door, and set it down, next to my shoes. I've always found it odd how even though I'm not technically a police officer anymore, at police funerals, I still have the option of wearing my uniform. I think he'd like that, if I did. He was adamant that I didn't go to bone head for detective training, saying about how I was needed in Ballarat, or some such nonsense. Times like these I'm sad I have such an excellent memory, because I truly would like to forget that last night, that last argument we had. But I can't.

I go to bed in near quiet, the only sound is the ticking of the off white clock in my small kitchen keeping time. It's good at that, keeping time. It's still slowly losing seconds, however. Because that's just how clocks work. Forever playing their own little losing game. Ticking away, and away, until one day, they just stop.

…

Ballarat is the same as it always was. I booked myself a night at the Conelly Boarding House, since I've stayed their previously and found it tolerable. No one recognizes me.

The following day is the funeral. In Rose's telegram she explained to me that I was requested to be a pole barer and make a speech. I supposed I owed it to him so I said yes to both. Showing up for the viewing, I felt as out of place as I looked, I suspect. Around me were the familiar faces that I had gotten use to seeing, and yet at the same time, they felt so different. New creases, new wrinkles, new changes, new dresses, new scars.

Mattie looks elegant, in her black dress. She's crying the appropriate amount, into her embroided handkerchief, holding onto Beville's arm. Rose looks devastated, her face is blotchy, and she seems on the verge of collapse. Jean is standing next to Lucien, both look somber. Neither of them are crying. The Tynemans are here, there's four now, if he's not mistaken. Edward found himself a wife, it seemed. A small piece of me is glad that it's not Rose. No one approaches me. I suppose that was to be expected, leaving the way I did. I remember I was still wearing at the Doctor as I was getting on the train and he was still trying to convince me to stay. Someone I don't recognize, my replacement, his now holding Rose's hand. Danny Parks is putting a silver flask into the coffin. He has no children of his own and never married. I notice his sister milling around, with her son. When it's my turn to approach the coffin I fear my feet may fail me.

Some people may say that the dead look to be sleeping, like they could wake up and talk you, ask why you're crying in your Sunday best. But Matthew Lawson? He looks dead. I spent many nights with him, post pre and post accident, and I can assure you he didn't sleep like this. He always slept on his stomach, holding onto a pillow. (Or me, if I was very lucky.) I don't know how long I stood there, looking at him. It must have been a long time, because there was an arm around me, suddenly, leading me away from him.

I look up at my savior and find Superintendent Bill Hobart looking back at me. He leads me out to where the other pole barers are waiting. They're talking among each other, but they stop when I approach. Bill is still holding onto my arm so tightly I think he may leave a bruise. He's holding on more for himself now, I suppose. I notice he has one single medal on his blazer, but I don't recognize it. We end up next to each other, he looks like he has something to say, but he doesn't say it. We all just stand in silence, while the other's judge me. I suppose they're questioning why he would say in his will he wanted me to be here. I suppose I am too.

Ballarat is like a ghost town, haunted by the ghosts of relationships I used to have. The last remnants of a friendly touch. A kind glance. Them that I left behind.

The sun is bright in the winter sky, it's never summer in Ballarat.

…

Rose holds the wake, and she makes it very clear that if I hadn't been with Bill then I wouldn't have been let in. I don't really know why I decided to come, I hadn't planned on it and I had clothes to wash. Perhaps some part of my wanted to salvage what was left of this life, perhaps I just wanted to be surrounded by people I cared about, I could no longer tell.

Bill seems to have taken pity on me, for the first ten minutes at least, and allows me to stand with him and hide from the public eye, and he tells me I gave a lovely speech. My speech was suitably sad, and full of the memories and trivial comments people love in those sorts of things. I acted correctly somber, and said the correct things. I've always loved rules (or so they tell me) and the rules of social interaction are no different.

Bill leaves me, eventually, he's going to say something to someone I don't recognize. I end up sitting on the couch, and taking in the changes to the Blake house over the years I've been away. It looks largely the same. There's new pictures on top of the piano. Ones I remember, ones I don't. I notice that I'm not in any of them, and even though I know I should be past it, it still hurts me. I still have pictures of when I lived here in my living room, the pictures I took with Rose inside a photo booth, the one nice photo of the three of us just after the Doctor and Jean got engaged, but it's nowhere to be seen. I scolded myself, well what did you expect, Charlie. You burned these bridges and you know it. It doesn't dull the ache.

There was beer on offer, and scotch. Someone gives me a drink half an hour in. I don't know who. I taste it, and it burns. I don't know much about scotch, but if what my friends at the Masonic Lodge tell me is correct, this is the good stuff. Single Malt, I think. He wouldn't drink any other kind. Deep in my stomach, I feel that ache I thought I had buried.

That ache that wants to lie with him in bed, to feel his hands on my hips, those nights we spent in his car, stargazing in place of traditional dates. I tired to bury all those feelings when I knew I wouldn't be back. But I can't. My heart wont. It refuses. My mother used to tell me, before she too passed away, that you can lie to your head, and your hands, but not your heart. It won't let you.

She was right, as she often was. I always believed my mother died from stress. She worked until the day she kicked it. Her funeral was empty except for me and my brothers. Her family disowned her when she married a Catholic man. I never knew my grandparents. My father was an orphan, my mother disowned, I suppose alone-ness is in my genes. I suppose I should be use to it.

I'm pulled from my internal monologue by a weight next to me on the couch. The Doctor. He seems older now. Aged. But somehow more alive them me. He always was. He doesn't speak to me. We just sit, and watch. I don't know how to talk to him. He won't broach me. An uneasy silence spreads. Somewhere, a clock is ticking, the one in the kitchen that is always three minutes behind.

"You gave a lovely speech."

"Thank you."

Nothing happened.

No wave of emotion. No hug. No tears. No massive weight leaving my chest. Just exchanged pleasantries.

"He never stopped."

"Stopped what? I always hated these cryptic heart to hearts. I play along, I have nothing better to do.

"Waiting for you to come back." I never stopped waiting to come back. I don't have a reply. "Surely you aren't so far gone now that you can't share a moment with an old friend?" Gone where? Certainly, I haven't changed that much. (Have I?)

"I love..Loved, him." A private confessional into an out of place priest. I haven't been to church in years.

"He knew. That's why he waited. I must confess, Charlie. I wasn't expecting to see you here."

"I wasn't expecting to come. I don't even know how he died. He didn't suffer, did he?"  
"No. It was pneumonia. As quick as he went down, he was gone."

"That's good." I don't even know what to say. I've never been very good at this sort of thing. He knows.

"You're always welcome here, Charlie." I want to laugh at him, but I don't. I'm not sure why he feels the need to lie to me like this, not anymore. I put on my best mourners smile.

"I know." He pats me on the arm, and he has to leave, his wife is calling him.

I am alone, and surrounded by people.

…

The following day I boarded the train back to Melbourne. I watch Ballarat pull away, again, the Doctor's card with his new number tucked neatly into my pocket. Both of us know that I will probably never call that number. (I don't think he truly believes I will leave forever. I don't think that I want to break his heart so: Probably)

No one comes to see me off, not that I was expecting anyone. Last time I left, I was still fighting with the doctor. I wanted to be a detective, and I was not going to let anyone stop me. So I left. And I never came back, even to those who were waiting for me. Bill told me, later, when he was drunk, that he used to spend hours in the backseat of his car, listening to the radio and watching the stars.

He left me the car, actually. His cream Holden where we used to make love in the backseat, a backdrop of stars over our heads, half his face in shadow, half in light. I hired a boy to drive it to Melbourne for me. It's an old car, but I don't have one, so I suppose I'll find a use for it. If not: I'll sell it.

I was planning my afternoon, as the train pulled away. I had things to do, places to be. I would go into work and see what my partner was up to, possibly conduct some interviews. Then, I would have to go home and put on something nice, and put on my Freemasons pin, there was a meeting tonight and a vote I had to attend.

I take the time to wonder if he knows I loved him. I brush the thought away. My shirt is dirty.


End file.
